Aspatria Farmers Ltd Annual General Meeting

Aspatria Farmers steps in as the main sponsor of The Farmer Network

We are very pleased to announce that Aspatria Farmers has agreed to become the main corporate sponsor of The Farmer Network, which covers Cumbria and some parts of North Yorkshire providing farmers with access to training, expertise and collective buying opportunities.

We have had several discussions in recent months with The Farmer Network in regard to how our two farmer funded organisations could cooperate to try and help our farmers access the best advice, products and prices that will help them run sustainable farm businesses now and in the future.

The Farmer Network has been growing steadily since its inception in 2001 and today has over 850 members who subscribe each year and access the services that they offer. Whether it be local self help groups, farm walks or collective buying Cumbria Farmer Network is constantly asking its members what their challenges are and what the organisation can do to get them help and advice and as their membership grows the demands increase.

We believe that by working with The Farmer Network we can help Aspatria Farmer’s members and customers access a lot of the great work that they do, but also our two organisations working together will now represent the majority of the upland and lowland farmers in our areas and we can then work to see how we can leverage this to extract better deals and value for our farmers on their inputs or advice.

We are very much looking forward to working with the team at The Farmer Network to step up our joint activity on behalf of farmers at this difficult time and we very much hope that you will see in future newsletters a programme of events that you feel will be of real value to you and your family.

In particular helping younger farmers develop their skills and knowledge is crucially important and we will be working together to make sure that we access all the help and expertise needed by the next generation.